Rocket-Cat

Halloween Costume NASA Rocket Cat

Case

Inherency

NASA lacks the budget to be globally competitive in space exploration

Renstrom 14 Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.¶ Joelle Renstrom lives in Boston, where she teaches and writes about all things geeky. Her blog, Could This Happen?, explores the relationship between science and science fiction. JAN. 8 2014 10:41 AM
Here’s How to Convince the Public That We Need to Invest in Space Exploration http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/01/08/nasa_budget_here_s_how_to_convince_the_public_to_invest_in_space_exploration.html
Another year, another round of budget woes for NASA. The recent two-year budget agreement eases but doesn’t eliminate worries about sequestration’s stranglehold, and NASA will suffer, especially when it comes to planetary science. Once again, advocates of space exploration face the daunting challenge of devising compelling arguments to justify spending money on space despite pressing needs on Earth, which raises the question of how to convince politicians and the public that space is a worthwhile investment. The past holds the answer: Space advocates should leverage competition between countries and companies.¶ In 1962 Kennedy delivered the first widely resonant pro-space argument. While he resorted to some manipulation and fear-mongering by exploiting Cold War boogeymen, his rhetoric worked. NASA’s budget doubled between 1962 and 1963, and quadrupled between 1962 and 1966. Kennedy warned that space expenditures would rise 25 percent per week per person, but convinced people that safety and victory were worth it.¶After the 1969 moon landing, Carl Sagan merged pro-space rhetoric with philosophy, extolling the virtues of the perspective and humility space exploration brings. While it may be true that exploration promotes “cultural exuberance” and has always been a hallmark of humanity, even Sagan’s mentee Neil deGrasse Tyson admits those arguments are “tired” and appeal only to people who already value space exploration.

Private industry will not take the lead on space exploration

Ha 14 Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Private Companies Won’t Take The Lead In Space Exploration¶ Posted Mar 8, 2014 byAnthony Ha (@anthonyha) http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/08/neil-degrasse-tyson-sxsw/?ncid=rss
Famed scientist and science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about the importance of space exploration today during his keynote at South by Southwest Interactive.Despite advances by private companies, particularly SpaceX, he said they won’t be the ones making the biggest breakthroughs.¶ Tyson admitted that for him, the appeal of space travel is the simple fact that it’s “a frontier.” However, there are more practical reasons to go into space. For one thing, we need to be able to respond if we find out that an asteroid is headed for Earth.¶ “You know the dinosuars would have if they could have,” Tyson said. He joked that failing to pursue a space program when we have the scientific and technological capability would make us “the laughing stock” of other intelligent species: “They’d have human bones on display in their museum. ‘Here they are, not building a spaceship.'”¶ He also suggested that space travel is tied to other forms of significant innovation like transportation, energy, and health — which he contrasted with people “who innovate because you want to make a buck” and are trying to figure out “the next app.”¶Tyson described space travel as “a long-term investment”: “It’s an investment that private enterprise cannot lead.” He recalled the excitement around SpaceX’s delivery of cargo the International Space Station, which sparked discussion about whether private companies would replace government as the main engine behind space travel. Tyson’s response? “They brought cargo to the space station! NASA’s been doing that for 30 years!”¶The problem, he said, is that it’s hard to predict the risk and return on investment on “doing anything big and expensive first.” He noted thatthe first Europeans to come to America were not the Dutch East India Company, but Christopher Columbusand his crew, whoseexpedition was paid for by Spain. After the initial exploration, there will be opportunities for private companies.¶ “The first trillionaire in the world is going to be the person who first mines the asteroid belt,” Tyson said.

Plan

The United States Federal Government should immediately engage in resource extraction of all topically designated areas from the Earth’s moon.

Solvency

Mining the moon will become a viable venture that is good for capitalism

Engineering and Technology Magazine 16 December 2013 vol 8, issue 12¶ By Rebecca Pool¶ http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2013/12/deep-space-mine.cfm
As space-based commerce dawns, an ambitious few want to mine the Moon and near-Earth asteroids for precious metals and more.¶ In May last year, a spacecraft called Dragon made history. Developed by Space X, a California-based private space transport company, the craft became the first commercial spacecraft to ferry cargo between the International Space Station and Earth.¶ With Nasa scheduling a third re-supply mission for 9 December this year, the craft proves that a private space business can succeed. But for many more, commercial space transport is only the beginning.¶ 'We're opening up a whole new world to humanity that has abundant resources that will help project us into a multi-planet species,' says Bob Richards, chief executive of lunar lander developer, Moon Express. 'We believe that once we start exploring and prospecting the Moon, we will discover resources that we didn't know existed... and will change humanity's future.'¶ Richards heads up one of a growing band of new and ambitious private organisations that are very serious about mining the 'Moon or mining asteroids. Moon Express, for example, was founded in 2010 with a view to developing resources on the Moon while asteroid mining ventures Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries followed in 2012 and 2013.¶ Metal mining¶ The motivation for each entity is minerals and precious metals. Asteroids and the Moon, which has had its surface steadily battered by asteroids, are suffused with valuable metals; Nasa reckons a small, house-sized asteroid should contain metals worth millions of dollars. These include iron, nickel, titanium, platinum group metals, critical to fuel cell and clean tech development as well as rare earth elements such as lithium, as used in batteries and mobile phones. What's more, the Moon is loaded with vast quantities of the isotope helium-3, a potentially valuable fuel source for future nuclear fusion plants.¶ But minerals aside, what these up and coming commercial space enterprises also have in common is cash. As Richards puts it: 'We are backed by billionaires that are highly networked individuals. Not conservative venture funds that are looking for this investment and that investment; no, we're backed by visionaries.'¶ Indeed, Richards' colleagues at Moon Express include ex-Microsoft billionaire Naveen Jain while Planetary Resources has publicly boasted backing from Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt. But money aside, the businesses also ooze credibility.¶ Leaders from both Moon Express and Planetary Resources are former Nasa Mars mission managers while a Deep Space Industries chair led the team that turned Russia's Mir Space Station into the world's first commercial space facility. And with their thirst for minerals backed by billionaire funds, these up and coming entities have ambitious plans.¶ According to Richards, Moon Express will send a series of robotic spacecraft to the Moon for exploration and commercial development. His team of electrical, avionics, propulsion, software and RF design engineers has focused on developing lunar landers – lander systems that slow down and land on a surface – working with Nasa from the outset.¶ In 2010, the company won a Nasa contract for the purchase of technical data resulting from lunar lander development and demonstration. And the organisation is currently validating its guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software in test flights, on-board Nasa's own prototype lunar lander testbed, 'Mighty Eagle'.¶ Nasa is avidly nurturing partnerships with up and coming lunar and asteroid ventures, hoping the shared expertise will better its own programs and help drive the commercial sector forward too. And as Richards highlights, his systems are crucial.¶ 'You can buy everything you need to get to the Moon apart from the thing that slows you down and lands you on the Moon,' he says. 'Space X and many other suppliers sell rockets, these things are commodities, but you can't buy the last mile solution of getting to the Moon – the lunar lander – and that's what we have been concentrating on.'¶ Fly me to the Moon¶ Lunar Express's first mission is scheduled for 2015, tying in with the Google Lunar X-Prize competition in which private companies are racing to land a craft on the Moon by 31 December of that year. Its lunar lander will probably launch as secondary payload on the launch craft of a commercial satellite but then transfer from geostationary orbit to the surface of the Moon using its onboard propulsion.¶ According to Richards, the company is aiming for the near side of the Moon, focusing on a several hundred kilometre square region of dark mantle deposits expected to have very high titanium content. The lunar lander's payload will include imaging systems, including a neutron spectrometer, to measure bulk hydrogen composition of the Moon's surface at the landing site, as well as elemental composition.¶ During initial missions, kilogram samples of lunar material will be removed and brought back to Earth. Richards suggests these will be vacuumed from the Moon's surface using pressurised gases from the lunar lander, and on touchdown will become the first privately owned samples of lunar material in the world with each kilogram valued at more than $1bn.¶ This price sounds incredibly high, but then Nasa is spending around $800m – excluding the launch vehicle – on its OSIRIS-REx mission, which will return some 60g of material from a near-Earth asteroid. In addition to Nasa, other national space agencies will likely purchase commercial samples of extraterrestrial material in a bid to gain a greater foothold in space-based commerce.¶ Beyond the Moon¶ Asteroids offer a different mining proposition. While the idea of exploiting the natural resources of asteroids dates back more than 100 years, only now is technology becoming available to make this a reality.¶ Just last year, the California-based Keck Institute for Space Studies enlisted the great and the good from the space industry, including the Ames Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Johnson Space Center and Harvard University, to investigate the feasibility of capturing and dragging a small near-Earth asteroid into the Moon's orbit. And all by 2025.¶ The Keck team reckoned it was do-able for $2.6bn – slightly more than Nasa's 'Curiosity Mars rover – and the entire process would take between six to ten years' (see 'Asteroid capture: how do they do it?'). But while Nasa now considers the multi-billion dollar asteroid dragging exercise, would-be commercial asteroid ventures, including Deep Space Industries, intend to make a less ambitious start.¶ 'We're in the gathering business,' says David Gump, chief executive of Deep Space Industries. 'We think it's much more practical to track and approach a medium-sized asteroid that is at least 100m in diameter, pluck off boulders two to three metres in size, and vacuum up regolith to the capacity of our return vehicle.'¶ Gump and his team are currently using data from ground-based telescopes and ongoing government-funded missions to identify near-Earth asteroids in a similar orbit to our planet. As he explains, they are searching for less dense, so-called rubble-pile asteroids – from which minerals will be easier to extract – and adds: 'We also need to discover how fast an asteroid is spinning; if it's a fast spinner then it's going to be hard to gather material from it.'¶ Come 2016, the business intends to send out its first 'Firefly' probes to investigate potential asteroid targets, communicating size, rotation and resources back to Earth.'These one-way prospecting craft will be built from off-the-shelf cubesat and nanosat components and like Moon Express's initial craft, will be sent into space as secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles.¶ Gump reckons larger craft, 'Dragonflies' equipped with mining tools and fuel for a return journey, will set off during 2017 to harvest kilograms of asteroid material for scientific research and private collections. And come 2019, Gump says the company's full-scale commercial craft, known as Harvestor, will take-off with the first vehicle returning several hundred tonnes of material for processing within four years.¶ Critical resource¶But precious metals and minerals aside, water is the key resource any future space-based industry must develop first. Water is critical for life support and fuel propellant; break water apart into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen and you have rocket fuel. However, launching water into space from Earth consumes considerable energy so using what's already in space would slash mission costs.¶ Both Gump and Richards are very aware of this. Richards talks of building fuel stations on the Moon to supply his craft with hydrogen peroxide. 'Without this you'd have to take all your fuel with you for your journey back, and this just isn't economically viable.'¶Meanwhile, Gump's team intends to harvest water-rich asteroids; water from these asteroids could be used as propellant, as well as shipped to strategic storage locations set up as re-fuelling stations depots. Such fuel could be sold to Nasa and other space agencies, feed communications satellites and be directed, alongside water, to manned space stations, boosting the economics of space commerce considerably.¶Deep Space Industries has already laid out plans for an asteroid fuel processor that would be launched to a geosynchronous orbit. And as Gump explains: 'We're currently trading off whether we want to invent a zero gravity refinery or if we want to spin our processing facilities so we can use standard terrestrial methods to separate the fractions we want for propellant.'¶ He adds: 'Several billionaires are bringing down the cost of getting into space over the next decade, so within 20 years, we will have several private space stations carrying out, say, the kind of zero-gravity research for pharmaceutical firms that makes a lot of money. We really need to bring down the cost of operating in space.'¶ Could we and should we?¶ But while the billionaire-backed ventures battle with costs, some industry-watchers are asking the question; yes, we could, but should we?¶ Space exploration researcher Alice Gorman is based at Flinders University, Australia, and is an internationally recognised leader in the emerging field of space archaeology. Passionate about space, she believes both industry and academia underestimate the emotional investment people have in the night sky.¶ 'There is the view that it's just unethical to destroy another celestial body... but then [people] also question if it is right for a profit-making company to make massive profits from this,' she says. 'Nobody doubts the investment will be monumental and some argue that those willing to take these risks deserve all the rewards as this isn't for the faint-hearted.'¶ But, as Gorman also highlights, the world already has unequal distributions of wealth and some wonder if space-based industries could drive these disparities further apart. As she asks, could Earth one day comprise a terrestrial-based underclass looking up at the off-world wealthy.¶ Only time will tell if ethical and moral issues will stymie progress; but Richards remains unfazed. Having experienced public reactions first hand, he puts these down to social and political views, saying extreme socialists will hate the idea, extreme capitalists love the idea.¶'People are very attached to the Moon, biologically and psychologically, but take it for granted, and new exploration activities will redefine why the Moon is important to us,' he says.¶ 'The world will continue to grow thanks to the explorers and entrepreneurs who will do this anyway, backed, I think, by a rational majority.'

NASA will catalyze private sector action by demonstrating the feasibility of lunar mining

Spudis, Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, 10 (11/6/10, Paul, “Can NASA Get Its Groove Back?” http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2010/11/can-nasa-get-its-groove-back/, JMP)
Remember when space exploration was “groovy” and excitement about seeing humans explore the Solar System within our lifetimes was palpable? What happened to NASA and America’s dream to boldly go? The pathway that assured us that space exploration is cool, amazing and pushes excellence has disappeared, littered instead by U-turns and Stop signs. NASA’s groove was the right stuff. When did vanish? Can we get it back?¶ America’s rhythm is stalled. Movement in our economy is going the wrong way. Education standards are mediocre. We’re not evolving. We’re not in our groove. And the country feels it.¶ Is NASA’s dilemma symptomatic of what ails us? “If we could put a man on the Moon..” has become cliché but was the zenith of American exceptionalism. The last time a human walked on the Moon was in December 1972 – 38 years ago next month. NASA has long since stopped getting “free drinks” from the retelling of that decades old conquest. It’s time to light the fire again and do something profound, this time something cumulative and lasting. Conquering the Moon is where we found our groove and if we choose, where we can reclaim it.¶ NASA languished a year waiting to hear what, where and when their mission would be. They’re still waiting, as NASA ponders how to proceed on the “Flexible Path” to their ultimate goal of Mars. Congress recessed without passing a federal budget for 2011 and NASA is operating under a continuing resolution. Things are certainly flexible.¶ The latest buzz in the space blogosphere is about the recent midterm election results and subsequent changes in House committees with Republicans in the majority. After these new committee chairs take charge, will they set new priorities? Only time will tell but past statements by those mentioned to fill these positions give some clues. They seem less inclined to “sell the farm,” thereby giving control of U.S. space access to foreign entities. They seem to be cautious about handing the reins of LEO access to commercial start-ups, preferring to have them prove themselves first, while at the same time guaranteeing that NASA retains the infrastructure necessary to assure our national interests in space. Will their priorities for NASA rest more with the agency staying as a national economic and security asset and less as an international outreach program, heavily influenced by Earth science concerns? Much rests on the decisions made and the money appropriated by the incoming Congress.¶ The current administration’s decision to abandon NASA’s mission of resource utilization on the Moon needs to be revisited. The ability of theUnited States to routinely access cislunar space through the use of the Moon and its resources needs to be well understood and addressed. We cannot afford to remain complacent about the Moon while other countries move forward to reap the rewards of lunar return. TheUnited States needs to make smart investments that will pay long-term dividends. Lunar return is one of those economic and technological investments.¶ The majority of the panel of engineers and scientists invited to speak at the recent Space Manufacturing conference meeting at NASA’s Ames Research Center (sponsored by the Space Studies Institute) held the view that lunar mining was the logical next move and that government needed to “prime the pump” and demonstrate that this was possible before private enterprise would follow. We need private sector money to fully pursue the purpose and realize the potential of space exploration. NASA needs to show that resource utilization is possible on the Moon. Once we understand how to access and develop lunar resources, private enterprise will capitalize on these findings. As the door to a sustainable space faring infrastructure finally swings open, the tyranny of the rocket equation will be broken.¶ It is time for America to find its groove again. It is time to extol the right stuff and pursue goals of national excellence. Setting a goal that may be obtained in 30 years is not a space program. A return to the Moon to learn how to use its resources is achievable using existing technology and within the decade-long timescales demanded by our political process. ¶

Advantage 1: Capitalism

Uniqueness – Rejection of capitalism cripples economic growth

Rockwell 2 (Llewellyn, President and Founder – von Mises Institute, “The Legitimacy of Capitalism”, 7-18, https://misesuniversity.org/story/1005)
If you think about it, the hysteria is astonishing, even terrifying. The market economy has created unfathomable prosperity and, decade by decade, century by century, miraculous feats of innovation, production, distribution, and social coordination. To the free market, we oweall material prosperity, all leisure time, our health and longevity, our huge and growing population, nearly everything we call life itself. Capitalism and capitalism alone has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant sickness, and early death. In the absence of the capitalist economy and all its underlying institutions, the world's population would, over time, shrink to a fraction of its current size, with whatever was left of the human race systematically reduced to subsistence, eating only what can be hunted or gathered. Even the institution that is the source of the word civilization itself--the city--depends on trade and commerce, and cannot exist without them. And this is only to mention the economic benefits of capitalism. It is also an expression of freedom. It is not so much a social system but the natural result of a society wherein individual rights are respected, where businesses, families, and every form of association are permitted to flourish in the absence of coercion, theft, war, and aggression. Capitalism protects the weak from the strong, granting choice and opportunity to masses who once had no choice but to live in a state of dependency on the politically connected and their enforcers. Must we compare the record of capitalism with that of the state, which, looking at the sweep of this past century alone, killed hundreds of millions of people in its wars, famines, camps, and deliberate starvation campaigns? And the record of central planning of the type now being urged on American enterprise is perfectly abysmal. Let the state attempt to eradicate anything--unemployment, poverty, drugs, business cycles, illiteracy, crime, terrorism--and it ends up creating more of it than would have been the case if it had done nothing at all. The state has created nothing. The market has created everything. But let the stock market fall 20 percent in 18 months, and what happens? The leading intellectuals discover anew why the Bolshevik Revolution was a pretty good idea, even if the results weren't what idealists might have hoped. We are told that we must rethink the very foundations of civilization itself. In every society, there is greed, fraud, and theft. But let these vices rear their heads in a socialist society--though the norm is a continual and brutal struggle for power--and the fact goes unnoticed or is attributed to the remnants of capitalist thinking. Let these vices appear in a largely free economy, and the cry goes out: take away the freedom to trade and put the state in charge! The advocates of regulation may protest: we have no plan to eradicate the market economy and replace it with socialism, but rather to improve it, make it transparent, make it honest, save it from itself. This is the line now being pushed by the likes of John McCain, who protests that he favors free markets but opposes "crony capitalism." He says that it will take massive government oversight to bring about "trust and transparency," which are essential to market economies. Let's leave aside the evidence that the economic downturn and even the accounting scandals are a consequence of government meddling with credit and regulation of industry and the financial markets. A more fundamental question for McCain or anyone who agrees with him is: do you believe capitalism is soiled by the sins of individuals, in which case no social system measures up because they are all inhabited by sinful individuals, or do you believe that there is a sin at the very root of capitalism itself that can and must be suppressed by the state? Of course we know the answer. After all, if we are only talking about the sins of individuals, the market has been brutal in its punishment. To the same extent that the credit-fueled bull market overlooked old-fashioned concerns like corporate revenue, the market is now on a witch hunt against any firm that prettified its books. And this is all to the good. Whether the scandals result from greed, error, or just bad forecasting, the markets do not care: bankruptcy is the result. No institution, certainly not government, has a greater incentive to fix itself than the market. If you believe, however, that there is a sin at the heart of capitalism, it makes no sense to permit the market to police itself. The possibility of such a thing is ruled out a priori, which is a habit of mind as endemic to the interventionist as to the full-fledged socialist. It is a very dangerous mindset, too, because once the regulators are unleashed to "perfect" the market economy, there is no end to the number of blemishes the political class will discover and attempt to correct. The end result is to hobble and cripple markets to the point that they cannot do what they are supposed to do. At best, you end up with economies like we see in Europe today: bureaucratized and hamstrung, lacking in innovation and opportunity, burdened by unproductive welfare states, and riddled with political corruption. This in turn infects the culture by encouraging an attitude of dependency, one wholly contrary to the American spirit.

Winning the moon race is key to the societal paradigm that will prevail in space- American loss means free market will never emerge

Spudis 10 – Paul D. Spudis, Senior Staff Scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, February 9, 2010, “The New Space Race,” http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Opinion_Editorial/NewSpaceRace.pdf)
Thestruggle for soft power projection in spacehas not ended. If space resource extractionand commerce is possible, a significant question emerges – What societal paradigm shall prevail in this new economy?Many New Space advocates assume that free markets and capitalism is the obvious organizing principle of space commerce, but others might not agree. For example, to China, a government-corporatist oligarchy, the benefits of a pluralistic, free market system are not obvious. Moreover, respect for contract law, a fundamental reason why Western capitalism is successful while its implementation in the developing world has had mixed results, does not exist in China. Sowhat shall the organizing principle of society be in the new commerce of space resources:rule of law or authoritarian oligarchy? An American win in this new race for space does not guarantee that free markets will prevail, but an American loss could ensure that free markets would never emerge on this new frontier.

Impact – The impact is extinction

Torgerson 99 (Douglas, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Studies – Trent University, Ontario, The Promise of Green Politics: Environmentalism and the Public Sphere, p. 145-146)
By adopting an uncompromising posture, green radicalism serves to high-light the danger that green reforms might well be absorbed and rendered ineffective by the established order. Against reforims, green radicals emphasize the need to thoroughly transform prevailing institutions and ways of viewing the human/nature relationship. In the absence of coherent and plausible programs for radical transformation, however, desperate scenarios of crisis and catastrophe become inviting: “The very best thing for the planet,” one radical green has thus declared, “might be a massive worldwide economic depression”: “Amid the terrible hardships this would create for countless people, at least the machinery would stop for a while, and the Earth could take a breather.”5 Needless to say, this repugnant hope ignores the obvious range of potential consequences arising from such a scenario.Social insecurity and human misery could intensify human conflicts and promote neglect of environmental concerns as people desperately sought to protect themselves, there could also be increased terrorism,even warfare of a type and scale that would prove enormously destructive to life on earth.

AND downturn unleashes the worst forms of capitalism

Trainer 95 (Ted, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work – University of New South Wales, The Conserver Society: Alternative for Sustainability, p. 78-79)
It has been evident since the mid-1970s that the global economy is in considerable trouble. Growth rates have been low, inflation and unemployment rates have been high, and debt has risen to extraordinary levels. This critical state is basically caused by the fact that manufacturers can’t sell all the goods they can produce. They can’t find profitable investment outlets for all that constantly accumulating capital. Obviously an economy which doubles the amount of capital available per person every 20 years will soon set its people an impossible and farcical problem of how to consume all the goods that can be produced, and must be produced if all that capital is to be profitably invested. Now that they can’t make normal profits producing more useful goods, what they are doing is speculating, i.e., gambling. In the last decade or so there has been a marked increase in gambling on the share markets (hence the 1987 crash), in financial markets, on commodity prices, and in company takeovers. Indeed, this has been labeled the era of ‘casino capitalism’ (Strange 1986). Since the end of the long boom there has been an accelerating process of restructuring within the global economy in an effort to restore the conditions that will permit normal profits to be made again. Corporations have relocated plants, streamlined operations and worked for greater access to a more unified world market. It is important to them not to have to get permission to deal with this region and then that one, but to be able to put their goods and services on sale in, if possible, a single global market-place. Governments are desperate to ‘get their economies going’, so they accommodate to these demands of businessby opening their countries to the activities of foreign corporations, deregulating economies, and privatizing and thereby reducing government activities, expenditures and taxes on firms. Getting the economy going involves giving the global business sector more of what it wants: greater access, fewer restrictions, less protection for local firms, lower taxes, a more compliant workforce and fewer trade barriers. From here on the crisis is likely to deepen, especially because of worsening resource, energy and environmental costs and because of the polarization that condemns most people in the world to very low incomes and gives them little chance of becoming significant consumers. Consequently the growth and affluence economy has a powerful tendency to focus only on the relatively small sector where a few higher-income people purchase and can get jobs and where the profitable investments are to be found. Meanwhile desperate politicians and economists jump at the chance to invest in mega-buck developments like Eastern Creek Motorcycle Speedway in Sydney, because these mean more investment, turnover, subcontracts and jobs, and after all isn’t that development and progress? Evidently it is beyond the capacity of conventional economists and politicians to grasp the vast gulf between this merely capitalist development and appropriate development, i.e., development of the landscape, cooperatives, farms, workshops and arrangements that would enable communities to flourish. They will scramble to get the economy going in the only way they know, especially by giving the foreign corporations more favourable conditions, cutting state spending and binding us more tightly into the unifying global economy.

1NC – Kap Bad

Thesis

OBSERVATION ONE: The Thesis

A lack of resources makes a collapse of Capitalism is inevitable in the sqo

Wright, Sociology dept at University of Wisconsin-Madison, ‘12 Erik Olin Wright, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, ¶ American Sociological Review ¶ 78(1) 1–25 ¶ © American Sociological Association 2012 ¶ DOI: 10.1177/0003122412468882¶ Transforming Capitalism through Real Utopias
Capitalism inherently threatens the quality of the environment for future generations because of imperatives for consumerism and endless growth in material production. The world is finite; endless growth in material consumption is simply not compatible with long-term sustainability of the environment. This does not mean that prosperity as such is incompatible with the environment, but sim­ply that prosperity dependent on a dynamic of endless growth is incompatible.13 Consumerism and imperatives for growth within capitalism are not just cultural facts. Consumerism is a central imperative of a sta­ble capitalist economy, for it is only through people buying things in the market that capi­talist firms create jobs and only through jobs that most people can acquire income. An anti-consumerist economy is one in which produc­tivity growth is turned into greater leisure rather than greater consumption. But if this were to happen, capitalist firms would con­tinually face problems of inadequate demand for their products.14 In the economic crisis that began in 2008, the continual mantra was how to stimulate growth, how to increase consumer demand. Only by curtailing profit-maximization as the driving force allocating capital would it be possible to reengineer the economy in the rich regions of the world in such a way that increases in leisure would be given priority over increases in consumption, and most people would be able to acquire an adequate standard of living without continual economic growth in material production. All of this is inconsistent with capitalism.

A TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM IS INEVITABLE—THERE’S NOTHING LEFT TO EXPLOIT

MESZAROS (Prof. Emeritus @ Univ. Sussex) 1995¶ [Istavan, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition, // wyo]¶ p. 438-9
NEVERTHELESS, we may speak of the age of transition to socialism meaningfully in that:¶ Capital is presented with a dangerously narrowing range of feasible alternatives to the full activation of its structural crisis. Thus:¶the shrinking size of the world directly controlled by private capital in the twentieth century;¶ the sheer magnitude of the resources required for displacing its contradictions, within the constraints of an ominously diminishing return;3t5¶the slowly emerging saturation of the global framework of profitable capital production;3i9¶ — the chronic difficulties encountered in and generated by raising the necessary revenue for keeping in existence the parasitic sections of capital, at the expense of its productive parts;¶the noticeable weakening of the ideological power of manipulative institutons (which were originally established under the circumstances of postwar economic expansion and its twin brother: the ‘welfare state’) at times of recession and growing ‘structural unemployment’.¶Characteristically, this is the only context in which the apologists of capital have, at long last, taken notice of the existence of structural conditions and determinations. But, of course, the admission that unemployment is now ‘structural is stated — with a logic worthy of capital’s ‘analytical’ wisdom — not so as to call for a change in the structure (the social order) in which such consequences are unavoidable. On the contrary, in order to justify and maintain the selfsame structure intact, at whatever human cost, accepting ‘structural unemployment’ as the permanent feature of the one and only conceivable structure.¶ We can see here, again, the ‘eternalization of bourgeois conditions’, even in the face of a dramatically obvious and highly disturbing historical development. Yesterday the oracle said: ‘Full Employment in a Free Society’ (see the Lib-Labouring Lord Beveridge’s book of the same title); today it talks about ‘structural unemployment’. But, of course, nothing has really changed, and especially: nothing ought to change. For unemployment is ‘structural’, and therefore it is here to stay to the end of rinse. All these trends indicate a very real movement towards the ultimate limits of capital as such, and hence they show the historical actuality of a painful but inescapable process of transition.

Link

OBSERVATION TWO: Links

THE TEMPORAL EMERGENCY OF THE AFFIRMATIVE REPRESENTS A KEY SYMPTOM OF THIS CRISIS—THEIR CALL TO INTERVENE DESTROYS THE HOPE OF RADICAL POLITICS TO ENTER THE VACUUM CREATED BY CAPITAL’S CONTRADICTIONS AND RESTABILIZE THE SYSTEM, PROLONGING THE INEVITABLE

MESZAROS (Prof. Emeritus @ Univ. Sussex) 1995¶ [Istavan, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition, // wyo]¶ p. 930
THE difficulty is that the ‘moment’ of radical politics is strictly limited by the nature of the crises in question and the temporal determinations of their unfolding. The breach opened up at times of crisis cannot be left open forever and the measures adopted to fill it,from the earliest steps onwards, have their own logic and cumulative impact on subsequent interventions. Furthermore, both the existing socioeconomic structures and their corresponding framework of political institutions tend to act against radical initiatives by their very inertia as soon as the worst moment of the crisis is over and thus it becomes possible to contemplate again ‘the line of least resistance’. And no one can consider ‘radical restructuring’ the line of least resistance, since by its very nature it necessarily involves upheaval and the disconcerting prospect of the unknown.¶ No immediate economic achievement can offer a way out of this dilemma so as to prolong the life-span of revolutionary politics, since such limited economic achievements made within the confines of the old premises — act in the opposite direction by relieving the most pressing crisis symptoms and, as a result, reinforcing the old reproductive mechanism shaken by the crisis.¶ As history amply testifies, at the first sign of ‘recovery’, politics is pushed back Into its traditional role of helping to sustain and enforce the given socio-economic determinations. The claimed ‘recovery’ itself reached on the basis of the ‘well tried economic motivations’, acts as the self-evident ideological justification for reverting to the subservient, routine role of politics, in harmony with the dominant institutional framework. Thus, radical politics can only accelerate its own demise (and thereby shorten, instead of extending as it should, the favourable ‘moment’ of major political intervention) if it consents to define its own scope in terms of limited economic targets which are in fact necessarily dictated by the established socioeconomic structure in crisis.

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Impact

OBSERVATION THREE: The Impact

FIRST, CAPITALISM DOOMS US TO ECO-DOOM AND EXTINCTION

Joel Kovel, Alger Hiss Professor, Social Studies, Bard College, THE ENEMY OF NATURE: THE END OF CAPITALISM OR THE END OF THE WORLD, 2002, p. 5.
As the world, or to be more exact, the Western, industrial world, has leapt into a prosperity unimaginable to prior generations, it has prepared for itself a calamity far more unimaginable still. The present world system in effect has had three decades to limit its growth, and it has failed so abjectly that even the idea of limiting growth has been banished from official discourse. Further, it has been proved decisively that the internal logic of the present system translates ‘growth’ into increasing wealth for the few and increasing misery for themany. We must begin our inquiry therefore, with the chilling fact that ‘growth’ so conceived means the destruction of the natural foundation of civilization. If the world were a living organism, then any sensible observer would conclude that this ‘growth’ is a cancer that, if not somehow treated, means the destruction of human society, and even raises the question of the extinction of our species. A simple extrapolation tells us as much, once we learn that the growth is uncontrollable. The details are important and interesting, but less so than the chief conclusion —that irresistible growth, and the evident fact that this growth destabilizes and breaks down the natural ground necessary for human existence, means, in the plainest terms, that we are doomed under the present social order, and that we had better change it as soon as possible if we are to survive.

SECOND, THE TRANSITION IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE HOPE—THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS EXTINCTION OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH. SOONER IS BETTER

LEWIS (Instructor, Sewall Academic Program @ CU Boulder) 2002¶ [Chris H., On the Edge of Scarcity, “Global Industrial Civilization: The Necessary Collapse”, ed. M. Dobkowski & I. Wallimann, Syracuse U. Press, p.__//mac-tjc]¶
In conclusion, the only solution to the growing political and eco nomic chaos caused by the collapse of global industrial civilization is to en­courage the uncoupling of nations and regions from the global industrial economy. Unfortunately, millions will die in the wars and economic and political conflicts created by the accelerating collapse of global industrial civilization. But we can be assured that, on the basis of the past history of the collapse of regional civilizations such as the Mayan and the Roman Empires, barring global nuclear war, human societies and civilizations will continue to exist and develop on a smaller, regional scale. Yes, such civi­lizations will be violent, corrupt, and often cruel, but, in the end, less so than our current global industrial civilization, which is abusing the entire planet and threatening the mass death and suffering of all its peoples and the living, biological fabric of life on Earth.¶ The paradox of global economic development is that although it creates massive wealth and power for First World elites, it also creates massive poverty and suffering for Third World peoples and societies. The failure of global development to end this suffering and destruction will bring about us collapse. This collapse will cause millions of people to suffer and die throughout the world, but it should, paradoxically, ensure the survival of future human societies. Indeed, the collapse of global industrial civiliza­tion is necessary for the future, long-term survival of human beings. Al­though this future seems hopeless and heartless, it is not. We can learn a ot from our present global crisis. What we learn will shape our future and the future of the complex, interconnected web of life on Earth.

Alt

OBSERVATION FOUR: VOTE NEGATIVE

The alternative is to refuse action in the face of the crisis presented by the affirmative and do nothing

THAT WAS THE TEXT. NOW, SO THERE’S NO CONFUSION, HERE’S THE EVIDENCE THAT SAYS THAT SOLVES:

ZIZEK 2004 [Slavoj, Serbian Nationalist and Historical Revisionist, Revolution at the Gates, p. 169-171 wyo-tjc]
Indeed, since the “normal” functioning of capitalism involves some kind of disavowal of the basic principle of its functioning (today’s model capitalist is someone who, after ruthlessly generating profit, then generously shares parts of it, giving large donations to churches, victims of ethnic or sexual abuse, etc., posing as a humanitarian), the ultimate act of transgression is to assert this principle directly, depriving it of its humanitarian mask. I am therefore tempted to reverse Marx’s Thesis 11: the first task today is precisely not to succumb to the temptation to act, to intervene directly and change things {which then inevitably ends in a cul-de-sac of debilitating impossibility: “What can we do against global capital?”), but to question the hegemonic ideological co-ordinates. In short, our historical moment is still that of Adorno: to the Question “What should we do?” I can most often truly answer with “I don’t know.” I can only try to analyse rigorously what there is. Here people reproach me: When you practice criticism, you are also obliged to say how one should make it better. To my mind, this is incontrovertibly a bourgeois prejudice. Many times in history it so happened that the very works which pursued purely theoretical goals transformed consciousness and thereby also social reality. If, today, we follow a direct call to act, this act will not be performed in an empty space—it will be an act within the hegemonic ideological cooridinates: those who “really want to do somethingto help people” get involved in {undoubtedly honourable} exploits like Medecins sans frontiers//, Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns, which are all not only tolerated but even supported by the media, even if they seemingly encroach on economic territory (for example, denouncing and boycotting companies which do not respect ecological conditions, or use child labour) – they are tolerated and supported as long as they do not get too close to a certain limit. This kind of activity provides the perfect example of interpassivity? Of doing things not in order to achieve something, but to prevent something from really happening, really changing. All this frenetic humanitarian, politically correct, etc. activity fits the formula of “Let’s go on changing something all the time so that, globally, things will remain the same!” If standard cultural studies criticize capitalism, they do so in the coded way that exemplifies Hollywood liberal paranoia: the enemy is “the system”, the hidden “organization”, the anti-democratic “conspiracy” not simply capitalism and state apparatuses. The problem with this critical stance is not only that it replaces concrete social analysis with a struggle against abstract paranoic fantasies, but that – in a typical paranoic gesture – it unnecessarily redoubles social reality, as if there were a secret Organization behind the “visible” capitalist and state organs. What we should accept is that there is no need for a secret “organization-within-an-organization”: the “conspiracy” is already in the “visible” organization as such, in the capitalist system, in the way the political space and state apparatuses work.

Anti-capitalist alternatives solve tech innovation and science. The alt solves the aff’s space exploration.

Palecek, August 2009 (Mike, “Capitalism versus Science” August 12 accessed on 6/20/11 at http://www.marxist.com/capitalism-versus-science.htm, kb)
Sputnik 1 was the first Earth-orbiting artificial satellite. It was launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. Work by Gregory R Todd. The ultimate proof of capitalism’s hindrance of science and technology comes not from capitalism, but from the alternative. While the Soviet Union under Stalin was far from the ideal socialist society (something which we have explained extensively elsewhere), its history gives us valuable insight into the potential of a nationalized planned economy. In 1917 the Bolsheviks took control of a backwards, semi-feudal, third world country that had been ruined by the First World War. In a matter of decades, it was transformed into a leading super-power. The USSR would go on to be the first to put a satellite into orbit, the first to put a man in space, and the first to build a permanently manned outpost in space. Soviet scientists pushed the frontiers of knowledge, particularly in the areas of Mathematics, Astronomy, Nuclear Physics, Space Exploration and Chemistry. Many Soviet era scientists have been awarded Nobel prizes in various fields. These successes are particularly stunning, when one considers the state the country was in when capitalism was overthrown. How were such advancements possible? How did the Soviet Union go from having a population that was 90% illiterate, to having more scientists, doctors and engineers per capita than any other country on Earth in just a few decades? The superiority of the nationalized planned economy and the break from the madness of capitalism is the only explanation. The first step in this process was simply the recognition that science was a priority. Under capitalism, the ability of private companies to develop science and technology is limited by a narrow view of what is profitable. Companies do not plan to advance technology, they plan to build a marketable product and will only do what is necessary to bring that product to market. The Soviets immediately recognized the importance of the overall development of science and technology and linked it to the development of the country as a whole. This broad view allowed them to put substantial resources into all areas of study. Another vital component of their success was the massive expansion of education. By abolishing private schools and providing free education at all levels, individuals in the population were able to meet their potential. A citizen could continue their studies as long as they were capable. By contrast, even many advanced capitalist countries have been unable to eliminate illiteracy today, let alone open up university education to all who are able. Under capitalism, massive financial barriers are placed in front of students, which prevent large portions of the population from reaching their potential. When half of the world’s population is forced to live on less than two dollars a day, we can only conclude that massive reserves of human talent are being wasted.

1NC - Investment for Private Corps CP

text

The USFG should create investment opportunities for Private Corporations to (read plan text)___

Solvency:

Privatization leads to increased innovation and quality that the government cannot access – spurs economic growth.



Edwards 09 (Chris, Director of Tax Policy Studies @ CATO Institute, M.A. in Economics, “Privatization”, February 2009 http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/privatization) JM

Governments on every continent have sold off state-owned assets to private investors in recent decades. Airports, railroads, energy utilities, and many other assets have been privatized. The privatization revolution has overthrown the belief widely held in the 20th century that governments should own the most important industries in the economy. Privatization has generally led to reduced costs, higher-quality services, and increased innovation in formerly moribund government industries. The presumption that government should own industry was challenged in the 1980s by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and by President Ronald Reagan. But while Thatcher made enormous reforms in Britain, only a few major federal assets have been privatized in this country. Conrail, a freight railroad, was privatized in 1987 for $1.7 billion. The Alaska Power Administration was privatized in 1996. The federal helium reserve was privatized in 1996 for $1.8 billion. The Elk Hills Petroleum Reserve was sold in 1997 for $3.7 billion. The U.S. Enrichment Corporation, which provides enriched uranium to the nuclear industry, was privatized in 1998 for $3.1 billion. There remain many federal assets that should be privatized, including businesses such as Amtrak and infrastructure such as the air traffic control system. The government also holds billions of dollars of real estate that should be sold. The benefits to the federal budget of privatization would be modest, butthe benefits to the economy would be large as newly private businesses would innovate and improve their performance. The Office of Management and Budget has calculated that about half of all federal employees perform tasks that are not "inherently governmental." The Bush administration had attempted to contract some of those activities to outside vendors, but such "competitive sourcing" is not privatization. Privatization makes an activity entirely private, taking it completely off of the government's books. That allows for greater innovation and prevents corruption, which is a serious pitfall of government contracting. Privatization of federal assets makes sense for many reasons. First, sales of federal assets would cut the budget deficit. Second, privatization would reduce the responsibilities of the government so that policymakers could better focus on their core responsibilities, such as national security. Third, there is vast foreign privatization experience that could be drawn on in pursuing U.S. reforms. Fourth, privatization would spur economic growth by opening new markets to entrepreneurs. For example, repeal of the postal monopoly could bring major innovation to the mail industry, just as the 1980s' breakup of AT&T brought innovation to the telecommunications industry. Some policymakers think that certain activities, such as air traffic control, are "too important" to leave to the private sector. But the reality is just the opposite. The government has shown itself to be a failure at providing efficiency and high quality in services such as air traffic control. Such industries are too important to miss out on the innovations that private entrepreneurs could bring to them.

Net Benefit

Tax breaks and incentives revitalize the space industry and creates thousands of jobs.



King 10 (Leo, Jacksonville Space News Examiner, “Nelson unveils commercial space plan”, Aug 19 2010 http://www.examiner.com/space-news-in-jacksonville/nelson-unveils-commercial-space-plan) JM

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, in a move to further lessen the impact from the wind-down of the space shuttlesaid on Tuesday a plan is aimed at boosting the commercial rocket industry and attracting thousands of jobs to Florida’s Space Coast. In meetings with representatives from NASA and various commercial aerospace ventures at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, Nelson touted a new measure that would create up to five regional business enterprise zones around the country as magnets for commercial space ventures – which in turn would attract jobs to areas where there are lots of scientists and engineers. There are also implications for Cecil Field in Jacksonville. It is Florida’s only commercial spaceport and is FASA-licensed to be a spaceport. More specifically, his office said, the Commercial Space Jobs and Investment Act would allow space-related businesses - situated around places like the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to qualify for major tax breaks and other incentives. “President Kennedy was right when he predicted that space exploration would create a great number of new companies and strengthen our economy,” Nelson said. “What we’re doing now is everything we can to ensure KSC’s continued importance to our nation’s space exploration effort, while also broadening the economic opportunities along our Space Coast.” Nelson said this new measure is the next critical step to spurring space-industry job growth in the region. Earlier this month, the Senator pointed out, the Senate quickly and unanimously passed a different Nelson-engineered plan, and the U.S. House of Representatives is considering a comparable measure. The Senate-approved plan provides enough money for another space shuttle flight next year, for jump-starting NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, and for developing the commercial rocket industry – all of which will save jobs of thousands of displaced shuttle workers.The new proposal - to give tax breaks to commercial space entrepreneurs - is drawing the support of aerospace industry leaders including those from Space Florida, the state-backed organization charged with promoting the development of commercial rocketry and related undertakings. “The Commercial Space Jobs and Investment Act symbolizes a significant step forward in ensuring the right incentives are in place to attract industry to Florida, and the broader domestic marketplace,” said Frank DiBello, Space Florida president. He added, “This bill will stimulate the commercial space industry to create jobs in our state, at a time when we need it most.”

Privatize DA

1NC

Uniqueness: NASA Is allowing Private industry to take the lead on moon development

Market Watch 9/16 Why billionaires are launching into space¶ By Jennifer Booton¶ Published: Sept 17, 2014 8:12 a.m. ET¶ The so-called New Space market is attracting interest from the ultra rich http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-billionaires-are-launching-into-space-2014-09-16/print MJS
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The solar system is increasingly becoming a niche club for billionaires, angel investors and major investment funds.¶Amazon Inc. AMZN, +0.91%CEO Jeff Bezos became the third billionaire to join the fight to control the so-called “New Space” market on Tuesday, rising to the ranks of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. chief executive Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson.¶ Bezos’ startup, Blue Origin LLC, is reportedly tacked onto a multibillion-dollar NASA contract with Boeing BA, +0.28%announced on Tuesday that would give the e-commerce CEO a major stake in the U.S.’s fast-growing privatized space sector.¶ Blue Origin declined to comment on or confirm its ties with Boeing. The partnership was originally reported late Monday by The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.¶Bezos isn’t alone in his interest in this fast-growing market: more tech entrepreneurs are sensing the opportunity of government contracts and unexplored terrain, and dedicating resources to developing what Branson has called the “final frontier” of exploration.¶ The so-called “New Space” market is forecast to become the next major “innovation economy,” joining the ranks of the Internet, biotechnology, aviation and automotive sectors, said NewSpace Global CEO Dick David, whose three-year old company offers members analysis about the New Space market with the goal of bridging the gap between technological talent and potential financial backers.¶ “These are all innovation economies that come to the culture slowly, emerge, grow and become a part of the fabric of our culture hereinafter,” he said in an interview with MarketWatch. “Billionaires didn’t become billionaires by making bad decisions.”¶ The reported tie between Blue Origin and Boeing is part of a $6.8 billion contract announced Tuesday by NASA that gives Boeing and SpaceX the opportunity to develop crew-carrying ships that will ferry humans to and from the International Space Station.¶ Bloomberg News¶ A Boeing Delta IV rocket launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2003.¶ A part of the U.S.’s Launch America program, the contract is designed to end the nation’s reliance on Russian space launches by 2017, drastically reducing the cost for human space launches and bringing commercialized space travel closer to reality.¶The U.S. has for years sought to develop a viable space commerce industry, replete with dominant space transportation and what it calls “entrepreneurial New Space activities.” To do that it has long called for an affordable and dependable way to travel to and from space.¶ SpaceX, ranked in a NewSpace Global index as the top privately-held New Space company in the world among some 750-plus, has pioneered a solution for affordable and privatized space travel.¶ Musk has long sought to make SpaceX the world’s pre-eminent space travel company, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets, particularly Mars. The company made history in 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads and returned to Earth safely.¶The competition between Musk and Bezos will only intensify from here on out, raising the stakes across the industry and potentially lowering the threshold to profitability.¶ This could help to further bridge the gap between the financial community, which includes angel investors and venture-capital firms -- some of which have long been hesitant to put money in the burgeoning market -- and the technological talent of the New Space industry.¶NASA on Tuesday expressed hope that the private-sector competition will help get Americans back to the moon -- sooner rather than later.

Link: Privatization is the only feasible, cost-effective way to explore space – NASA fails and crowds out enterprise.

Boaz 08 (David, VP of the Cato Institute, “Space Privatization – From Cato to the BBC” Sep. 15 2008 http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/space-privatization-from-cato-to-the-bbc/) JM
Future expeditions to the Moon and beyond will only be politically and financially feasible if they are cut-price ventures. He concludes that fostering good relations with other countries is insufficient justification for the expenditures, and that NASA should move aside and allow the private sector to play a role in manned space flight. The cost of these activities must lessen if they are to continue, and that will only happen with a decrease or removal of government involvement. Rees observes that only NASA deals with science, planetary exploration, and astronauts, while the private sector is allowed to exploit space commercially for things such as telecommunications. However, there is no shortage of interest in space entrepreneurship: wealthy people with a track record of commercial achievement are yearning to get involved. Rees sees space probes plastered with commercial logos in the future, just as Formula One racers are now. Those ideas may sound radical, but not if you’ve been following the work of the Cato Institute. As long ago as 1986, Alan Pell Crawford wrote hopefully “space commercialization … is a reality,” and looked forward to the country making progress toward a free market in space. The elimination of NASA was a recommendation in the Cato Handbook for Congress in 1999. Edward L. Hudgins, former editor of Regulation magazine, wrote a great deal about private options in space. In 1995, he testified before the House Committee on Appropriations that the government should move out of non-defense related space activities, noting the high costs and wastefulness incurred by NASA. In 2001, Hudgins wrote “A Plea for Private Cosmonauts,” in which he urged the United States to follow the Russians (!) in rediscovering the benefits of free markets after NASA refused to honor Dennis Tito’s request for a trip to the ISS. Hudgins testified again before the House in 2001, this time before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. He noted that since the beginning of the Space Age, NASA has actively discouraged and barred many private space endeavors. This effectively works against the advancement and expansion of technology, while pushing out talent to foreign countries who court American scientists and researches to launch from their less-regulated facilities. In “Move Aside NASA,” Hudgins reported that neither the station nor the shuttle does much important science. This makes the price tag of $100 billion for the ISS, far above its original projected cost, unjustifiable. Michael Gough in 1997 argued that the space “shuttle is a bust scientifically and commercially” and that both successful and unsuccessful NASA programs have crowded out private explorers, eliminating the possibility of lessening those problems. Molly K. Macauley of Resources for the Future argued in the Summer 2003 issue of Regulation that legislators and regulators had failed to take into account “the ills of price regulation, government competition, or command-and-control management” in making laws for space exploration.

Internal Link: Private sector funded missions get the economy back on track

CNJ 10 [Clovis News Journal, “Private sector should fund space missions”, 2010, accessed 07-09-11, ZR]
America’s future in space is entrepreneurial. President Barack Obama partly has recognized that reality in his recent speeches and policy changes on NASA and American space policy. “I give Obama mixed reviews on his space policy,” said Ed Hudgins, author of “Space: The Free Market Frontier.” There were positive elements, he said, including “canceling the Constellation,” a proposed new mission to the moon. And the president is encouraging “the private sector for low-Earth-orbit missions.” Hudgins said only the private sector can make prices for a product or service go down as quality goes up, such as with computers, TV sets and the global airline industry. The same is true for making space flights more common for commercial or tourist missions. He pointed to such ongoing private space efforts as those by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX in Hawthorne and Robert Bigelow’s Bigelow Aerospace. On the negative side is Obama’s vision for NASA, which is struggling for new missions as the Space Shuttle program is retired this year. He talked about a mission to Mars occurring in his lifetime. “I expect to be around to see it,” the president said in an April 15 speech at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Given that the president is 48 and could live another 40 years or so, that’s not all that ambitious. He also called for landing an astronaut on an asteroid within 15 years. Those goals contrast with President John F. Kennedy’s proclamation before Congress on May 25, 1961, that America would land a man “by the end of this decade.” That call was fulfilled on time, eight years later. Granted, Mars and asteroid missions would be much more difficult. But more important is that the nature of space exploration has changed greatly since 1961, with private enterprises shooting faster toward the stars. Even with the cancellation of NASA funding for the Constellation project, Hudgins said, NASA’s space proposals “shape up to be more NASA boondoggles. They’re not making us a space-faring civilization. All this does is keep NASA employees at work. To what end?” According to a November 2007 NASA estimate, the Mars mission alone could cost as much as $450 billion. And that’s before factoring in the usual government cost overruns. Hudgins said missions to asteroids and Mars would be much cheaper once the private sector built up a strong technological infrastructure for space exploration. If the federal government really wanted to help, he said, it should take up the proposal by former Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Bob Walker to give a 25-year tax exemption to any company that maintained a base on the moon for 365 consecutive days. This rewardwould appeal to such large, high-tech companies as GE, Microsoft, Apple and Intel. There would be no cost to taxpayers; and no government bureaucracy involved. “The tax break wouldn’t come into effect until the moon base was constructed,” Hudgins explained. “But think of all the revenue paid by the private infrastructure” that built the moon base. We encourage New Mexico’s and Texas’ congressional delegation to look critically at the president’s impractical and expensive space boondoggles, especially at a time when the country is already $12.7 trillion in debt. But they should embrace Obama’s push toward privatization — then push it further.

Impact: Economic downturn breeds wars
Mead 9 (Henry , Sr fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, The New Republic, 2/4/09, http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=571cbbb9-2887-4d81-8542-92e83915f5f8&p=2) ET
So far, such half-hearted experiments not only have failed to work; they have left the societies that have tried them in a progressively worse position, farther behind the front-runners as time goes by. Argentina has lost ground to Chile; Russian development has fallen farther behind that of the Baltic states and Central Europe. Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the world. Crisis can also strengthen the hand of religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to resist liberal capitalist society for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these societies are often less established and more vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more established firms in wealthier societies. As a result, developing countries and countries where capitalism has relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater economic and political damage when crisis strikes--as, inevitably, it does. And, consequently, financial crises often reinforce rather than challenge the global distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again. None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.